So here it is, the first week of June and the summer movie season has kicked off with a vengeance… Spiderman 3, Shrek 3, Pirates 3 (I'm detecting a theme here) and Knocked Up have all come pounding into the theatres the past month and made a lot of noise about opening weekend grosses and records set and broken… blah, blah, blah. What I find most interesting here is how freaking long most of these movies are! (Shrek actually clocks in at a very reasonable 93 minutes, so it's off the hook for this discussion.)
Let me first say that I'm the last person to complain about a movie being too long just because of the number of minutes it runs. As far as I'm concerned, it's not how long the movie runs, it's how long it FEELS like it runs. I've watched 3 hour films that have flown by, and endured 90 minute movies that couldn't end fast enough. (I have plans, one of these days, to sit down and watch The Lord of The Rings in it's entirety—and yes, that's the extended Director's cut versions of each film—but haven't found a free weekend that I can sock away 14 hours for that particular marathon.) So 2 hour plus running times don't scare me away.
Having said that…
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, at 2 hours and 45 minutes, is easily the longest of the May releases (and nearly as long as that title). And while I'm sure that it could have benefited from some judicious editing and will freely acknowledge that, critically speaking, it's probably a flawed film, I also have to admit that I'm a sucker for these films and will gleefully go along for the whole ride. I enjoyed this one and look forward to seeing it again (though that may well be when it comes out on DVD… another marathon, as we watch 2 & 3 back to back, to catch all those story points that got lost in the intervening months between release dates for the movies).
Spiderman 3 clocks in at a rather bloated 2 hours and 19 minutes, and showed some strains at that length, I think. (This series has been getting longer with each iteration, with Spiderman running 121 minutes and Spidey 2 at 127. 3's 139 minutes trumps both of those, though.) My problems with 3 stem more from story than length, as I start to wonder why it is that superhero movies seem to feel that they MUST have multiple villains. Do they think we're gonna get bored if we don't have different bad guys for Spidey to kick around? Whatever the reason, I found Venom to be almost a waste of time, and the "sympathetic" Sandman somewhat tedious. Raimi really embraces his Evil Dead sense of humor with Peter Parker's dip into the dark side, but I'm not sure that it played out as expected, coming across as more laughable than amusing. Overall, I don't think it was a bad movie… it just left me unimpressed.
This week was Knocked Up, with a running time of 132 minutes. That's right, folks, a romantic comedy that runs 2 hours and 12 minutes (30-45 minutes over the "optimum" running time for a movie like this). I guarantee you, I felt every last one of those final 30 minutes.
Reviews for this have been, almost across the board, positive, and the trailers were amusing, so I was hopeful going in. But now I'm wondering if all these glowing reviews were written by critics so smitten by Judd Apatow's other work that they "gave this one a pass." This is not to say I didn't find the movie amusing. I just hesitate to embrace the "best comedy of the year!" notion I've been seeing all week. I found the movie uneven, rather bloated and suffering from a little too much reality (in the characters of Pete and Debbie, who remind me of many an unpleasant couple I've known in the past).
Part of the problem, I think, stems from the amount of improv in the film. Seth Rogen (the schlubby male lead) was on KROQ the other day, talking about the movie and mentioned that a lot of the scenes were improved, at least in part. And I think it was apparent that almost any scene that had Rogen and his buddies involved was heavily improved.
I'm going to acknowledge here that this next statement is coming from a writer/actor that probably can't improv his way out of a paper bag (though that sounds like it could be an interesting improv activity), but there's a REASON most movies are scripted (any film by Christopher Guest notwithstanding). Improv can be a great tool, and it can help you find things that you'd never find by overthinking and analyzing a scene or situation. But it's prone to abuse, and can veer over into self-indulgence at the blink of an eye. And I think Knocked Up suffers from a little too much improv and not enough structure. But hey, judging by those reviews, I'm clearly in the minority.
Next up this week is Ocean's 13 (and I still haven't caught 28 Weeks Later). Here's to hoping for less "epic" films… or at least ones that don't feel so epic.
Let me first say that I'm the last person to complain about a movie being too long just because of the number of minutes it runs. As far as I'm concerned, it's not how long the movie runs, it's how long it FEELS like it runs. I've watched 3 hour films that have flown by, and endured 90 minute movies that couldn't end fast enough. (I have plans, one of these days, to sit down and watch The Lord of The Rings in it's entirety—and yes, that's the extended Director's cut versions of each film—but haven't found a free weekend that I can sock away 14 hours for that particular marathon.) So 2 hour plus running times don't scare me away.
Having said that…
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, at 2 hours and 45 minutes, is easily the longest of the May releases (and nearly as long as that title). And while I'm sure that it could have benefited from some judicious editing and will freely acknowledge that, critically speaking, it's probably a flawed film, I also have to admit that I'm a sucker for these films and will gleefully go along for the whole ride. I enjoyed this one and look forward to seeing it again (though that may well be when it comes out on DVD… another marathon, as we watch 2 & 3 back to back, to catch all those story points that got lost in the intervening months between release dates for the movies).
Spiderman 3 clocks in at a rather bloated 2 hours and 19 minutes, and showed some strains at that length, I think. (This series has been getting longer with each iteration, with Spiderman running 121 minutes and Spidey 2 at 127. 3's 139 minutes trumps both of those, though.) My problems with 3 stem more from story than length, as I start to wonder why it is that superhero movies seem to feel that they MUST have multiple villains. Do they think we're gonna get bored if we don't have different bad guys for Spidey to kick around? Whatever the reason, I found Venom to be almost a waste of time, and the "sympathetic" Sandman somewhat tedious. Raimi really embraces his Evil Dead sense of humor with Peter Parker's dip into the dark side, but I'm not sure that it played out as expected, coming across as more laughable than amusing. Overall, I don't think it was a bad movie… it just left me unimpressed.
This week was Knocked Up, with a running time of 132 minutes. That's right, folks, a romantic comedy that runs 2 hours and 12 minutes (30-45 minutes over the "optimum" running time for a movie like this). I guarantee you, I felt every last one of those final 30 minutes.
Reviews for this have been, almost across the board, positive, and the trailers were amusing, so I was hopeful going in. But now I'm wondering if all these glowing reviews were written by critics so smitten by Judd Apatow's other work that they "gave this one a pass." This is not to say I didn't find the movie amusing. I just hesitate to embrace the "best comedy of the year!" notion I've been seeing all week. I found the movie uneven, rather bloated and suffering from a little too much reality (in the characters of Pete and Debbie, who remind me of many an unpleasant couple I've known in the past).
Part of the problem, I think, stems from the amount of improv in the film. Seth Rogen (the schlubby male lead) was on KROQ the other day, talking about the movie and mentioned that a lot of the scenes were improved, at least in part. And I think it was apparent that almost any scene that had Rogen and his buddies involved was heavily improved.
I'm going to acknowledge here that this next statement is coming from a writer/actor that probably can't improv his way out of a paper bag (though that sounds like it could be an interesting improv activity), but there's a REASON most movies are scripted (any film by Christopher Guest notwithstanding). Improv can be a great tool, and it can help you find things that you'd never find by overthinking and analyzing a scene or situation. But it's prone to abuse, and can veer over into self-indulgence at the blink of an eye. And I think Knocked Up suffers from a little too much improv and not enough structure. But hey, judging by those reviews, I'm clearly in the minority.
Next up this week is Ocean's 13 (and I still haven't caught 28 Weeks Later). Here's to hoping for less "epic" films… or at least ones that don't feel so epic.
Comments
Was it too long? Yeah, I guess. I mean, the Vegas stuff felt like DVD extras. Then, again, it was so truthful and so funny I didn't care! I like the movie a lot. Is it loose and flabby? Yeah, but it's got a great heart and a ton of laughs.
q
Truthful may have been part of the problem for me. The sister and brother-in-law were one toxic couple (and I like both actors a lot).